The culture of intolerance at Google is
hardly unique. It exists at most large companies and other elite institutions.
Folks are sick of it.
This is unquestionably true. And it's not
just a coastal phenomenon. Companies are imposing groupthink in offices across
the land.
This is
unquestionably true. And it's not just a coastal phenomenon. Companies are
imposing groupthink in offices across the land. https://twitter.com/mccormickprof/status/894892845324173313 …
Worth noting that religious institutions
are essentially defined by the imposition of groupthink. If it works for them,
why not Google?
Given the creepy Google lingo and employee
hysteria, the better analogy is to a cult. Honest cults define their faith.
Google should also. https://twitter.com/alanlevinovitz/status/894926894004613120 …
This is Twitter exchange concerns a leaked internal memo by a now
former Google employee. The memo concerns the lack of intellectual diversity
within Google. It also touches on the way Google ought to achieve over kinds of
diversity (e.g., how to get more females to work for Google). Along the way it
offers opinions and critiques the reigning assumptions about why things are the
way they are. For this, the memo writer was fired by Google.
As you follow the link to read the ten-page memo for yourself (ad
fontes!) I hope that you will see how unjust Google’s reaction has been. I
hope that you will see what Google’s reaction to the memo says about where
Google is as a corporation and where the Technical-Bureaucratic Complex (to
modify Eisenhower’s famous warning about the “military-industrial
complex”) is. George and French are certainly right. Millions of people
in this country live and work in fear that their bosses will discover that they
think the reigning politically-correct ideology is vapid and even dangerous.
I also trust that you will see for yourself how unfair and
misleading the Gizmodo headline is. This memo is not an “anti-diversity
screed.” A screed is a long, tedious essay on a single topic. That the
23-year olds at Gizmodo labeled a screed tells us more about them than
it does about the memo. It tells us about their attention span. It also reveals
their lack of tolerance for competing ideas. It reveals that the first impulse
of political correctness is to crush opposition by characterizing it as odious.
One may agree or disagree with his argument but it is not ill-mannered nor is
it opposed to diversity. The author repeatedly argues the contrary. One wonders
if the Wunderkinder at Gizmodo actually read the memo. The Gizmodo
headline and Google’s reaction to the memo seems like prima facie
confirmation of the memo’s argument. The echo chamber exists. The emperor is
naked and Google fired the fellow who pointed out those facts.
George is certainly right that, over the last decade, there has
been an intellectual coalescence between big government, big academia, and big
business and the new coalition is, as Stella Morabito has been
noting, is bad for open inquiry and for human relationships—check out the Heidelcast episodes and other materials from
Stella. Levinovitz, however, makes a point (as does French in response).
Religious institutions do impose creeds upon their faculty and sometimes
their students. As a teacher in a religious school I voluntarily subscribe a
set of creeds—I literally wrote my name underneath them and took an oath to say
that these documents summarize my personal theological and moral convictions.
As French implies, however, there is a difference between what we do at my
school and what Google and other corporations are doing. My school does not
pretend to entertain every idea as potentially true. We promise each other a
certain freedom of inquiry within agreed boundaries. At my school, one is not
entitled to take the Remonstrant view of perseverance, however, and retain his
position as a teacher. Google pretends to be company that fosters open
inquiry and at least a certain degree of free-thinking. The memo was not, after
all, advocating bestiality. One wonders whether the author might still have his
job had he done the latter rather than to challenge the reigning ideology.
What this episode shows, in fact, is that everyone has a creed
even if they do not admit it. Everyone has a religion. Google’s religion
is political correctness. Google’s creed was not written by the Ancient Church (e.g., the Apostles’ Creed, the
Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed) nor by the Reformed Churches (e.g., the Heidelberg Catechism). Levinovitz is right.
Google does have a religion but French is also correct, it is more like a cult
than orthodox Christianity. What Levinovitz may not appreciate and what French
understands is that there is freedom within the boundaries. In a cult, however,
the boundaries are always shifting because the point of a cult is the leader,
not the truth. The reason that cults exist is because someone found a way to
use religion as a way to control to an inordinate degree other people. There is
a great difference between saying that Christians ought to marry other
Christians and saying “The leader says that you must marry this man.” All
religions exercise moral influence over their members but there is a great
difference between saying, “We believe x” and “You must only think about
diversity in the approved way.” Remember, the question was not whether
Google should achieve diversity or even whether there is a certain lack of
diversity within Google but why the lack of diversity exists and how
to remedy the problem. Google’s response to the memo is a lot more Orwellian
than anything one might find in a confessional Reformed denomination, which is
a kind of corporation. Google’s response to the memo is the sort of one might
expect to find in a small Utah town run by a renegade, old-fashioned Mormon
(who did not get the memo about polygamy).
Cults are attractive because they exercise absolute control over
both the great questions (life, death, and eternity) and the minutiae of life.
They tell one when to get up, how to dress, how to speak, how to think. For
some people and perhaps for some personality types, this sort of intellectual,
spiritual, and social control is a relief. They no longer have to deal with
those questions. They are settled by what the medievals called fides
implicita (implicit faith). Implicit faith does not know for one’s self but
knows that someone knows. Everyone had implicit faith in someone or something.
Pagans have implicit faith in nature or in themselves. Fools! American
evangelicals tend to place implicit faith in religious experience. Confessional
Protestants have implicit faith in holy Scripture. Romanists put implicit faith
in the church. This is one reason evangelicals and fundamentalists are tempted
by Romanism. Never mind that the current pope does not agree with the previous
two popes and never mind that the previous two popes did all they could to
distance Rome from the decisions of a magisterial council (Vatican II).
According to implicit faith, the convert neither has to know what Rome believes
(at the moment) but only that Rome believes it, whatever it is.
Like the Vatican, Google is asking for implicit faith in the
corporation’s leadership and ethos. Its source of revelation is some version of
radical subjectivism (there is no objective truth), radical egalitarianism
(there are no differences), anti-intellectual (the memo writer was fired for
asking people to think), quasi-Platonic (empirical sense experience is an
illusion). Pay no attention to universal sense experience. Pay no attention to
history, to objective reality (rumors of its death are greatly exaggerated),
trust only what the Great Leader says. Scientology is a model of transparency
and open inquiry compared to mega-corporations like Google.
Finally, this whole discussion, as disturbing as it is, is
fascinating because of the medium by which it came to light. I learned about it
late last night on Twitter, where, this morning, I saw the reaction the
reaction posted above. In some circles it is fashionable to decry Twitter as a
medium inappropriate for serious people (thinkers) or academics. To be sure
Twitter has its limits (140 characters at a time), nevertheless, Robert George
holds a chair at Princeton University, David French is a Senior Fellow at the
National Review Institute, and Alan Levinovitz teaches at James Madison
University. These and other of the Twitterati defy the stereotype about social
media.
